This is the living room. This is where we live...
The couch is light brown, the curtains chocolate brown. I've got a fair bit of light blue going on in there, too, but not enough that I should have blue carpet, so let's not go there.Looking the other way, you can see our intrepid attack dog...
The chair she's in is a sage green. It was bought when we had a couch that went with that chair on the left, which made sense. Now the couch is gone. The chair could go live somewhere else to tie the room together, but it's there for now. I'd prefer not to get something that would clash horribly with it, but if it has to go, it has to go. I'll bet BJ's mom would take it, it belonged to her parents.
Here's a better picture of that chair. It's a nice chair, but it's totally not my style.So, if you look through that door behind the attack dog...
...you end up in the kitchen/dining room.
This is what the floor looks like standing inside that doorway (behind the green chair). Love the tile. Hate the carpet. Hate hate hate it. Ugh. This is the dining room, this is where we dine:
Behind that baker's rack, where the dog food is, is a counter that separates the kitchen from the dining area. It's not an island, kind of a peninsula. There are cabinets above. You can kind of see the fireplace in the back, there, and the really dark cabinets. And the mismatched chairs. We have new chairs in the garage, waiting to be assembled and stained.
They've been there for almost three years.
There's the laminate floor in the playroom, which is behind the dining area. Note how the wood is a lot lighter than the table, which matches the cabinets. It would have been even lighter if I'd remembered to turn on the light in the playroom (where we play).And here's the fireplace. It's awesome. It's directly opposite the stove, and it burns real wood, and we use it quite a bit. I really love it.
...but it would look stupid next to the tile we have in the kitchen, which is what it would be next to if we tiled the whole eating area. And if we bring the laminate forward into the dining area, under that table, then the cabinets and the flooring would be clashy.I am stumped, internet. What say you?
10 comments:
I would go with the laminate. If you want to see what lighter floor and darker cabinets look like together, just come on over. My entire house has lighter oak hardwood with dark cherry cabinetry. I looks great. I don't think all the wood in the house should match - it would just be too much of one thing. I'll email you some of my pics to show you.
As an architect with a good interior design eye, I will tell you that your hardwood floors (or laminate) do not have to match all your wood furniture. I think it would actually look worse if it did...a little variation is nice! I would definitely prefer a hard surface over carpet in the dining area...for easier clean up!
As for carpet, I actually really like berber...a nice neautral color with specs of the darker brown would look nice I think...so it's not a huge dark rug (which would make the room look smaller), but it still pulls in the darker accent colors you already have in the room. That's my two cents :)
These posts are running parallel to the conversations happening in my own house. We HATE the carpet in the house (both upstairs and down) and truly despise the brown/gold/tan swirl tile in the foyer (blech!) so we've decided to do something about it since there's no bathroom/nursery remodel scheduled for this year.
Anyway...I vote for the laminate. It would be too dark if you tried to match the cabinets and I agree with the other commenters that variety is the spice of life. I think we're going to do laminate/hardwood in our foyer, kitchen and dining room and carpet everything else. It breaks the spaces up a bit, and requires that we replace an actually decent tile pattern in the kitchen so it doesn't look screwey. But, the thought of munchkins eating over carpet bugs the crap out of me.
Sorry it was a long two cents! :) Happy New Year!
Whatever you do, don't spend a lot on carpet. My dad has rental units and has found over the years that more expensive carpet merely "feels" nicer to the touch, but carpet will never last more than 5-8 years no matter how much you spend. That's why most apartment complexes put in the cheap stuff new every renter.
I sent you a message to your email regarding this one. I would not be concerned about the light colored laminate floors not matching with the cabinets....the two colors will compliment each other and the contrast will be nice. :)
Hello,
Just started reading your blog recently, it was linked from some other blog I read (don't remember which.)
Anyway, I think a darker brownish or other neutral-coloured carpet would look good and suit your needs. Don't know enough about them to say which kind though, something with a short pile that is easy to clean, I suppose.
Well, I'm still a fan of the vinyl tiles I mentioned before. They're really easy (my 3 yo son opened the box we had in the kitchen this morning and took off the backing and "laid" 8 before he came to tell us what a wonderful thing he was doing to help us) :) Just take up what you have, clean the subfloor, prime it, and, assuming you bought peel & stick, lay a chalk line and lay the tile. Easy! And you can walk on it at any time (except when the primer's wet. There's a huge variety, and I totally agree with all the earlier commenters who said all the flooring doesn't have to match. Just complement each choice (perhaps the carpet you will put in the living room will have an accent color that you can also have in the tile that will also have different colors, too). And I think a flooring specialist is an excellent choice if you really can't decide.
How much more convincing do you need to get rid of the carpet in the dining area?
Well, I would say if you are doing carpet don't cheap out too much. My father in law owns carpet land and so we talk about that kind of stuff everyonce in a while. In fact we just talked about it because I'm getting new carpet this month too! The carpet in ou house is low grade, whatever they put in when it was built and it's horrible. It's a nice neutral gray, but it stops there. It does not hold up against stains and when we bought it it had a HUGE red stain in the middle of the living room. I hate it. Everytime you get dirt on it it takes a serious scrubbing to get it out.
The good thing about a stainmaster type carpet is that you don't even need to use cleaner most of the time. With most stains, a little bit of hot water and a lot of blotting will get most stains out. We put in a really nice carpet at our old house and we spilled red wine, food, and pet stains on it and when we left there wasn't one permanent stain. It looked brand new and we'd had it for four years. My new house is only 3 years old and the carpet is disgusting.
All I'm saying is in my opinion, put in a stain master carpet. The one we had at our old house was a frizze (long haired berber) in a neautral color. It looked so good that my parents put it in their living room! If you're interested in that carpet email me and I'll get the name of it for you.
Good luck redecorating! I know it's stressful, but you'll be so satisfied when you look around at your house once your done! :)
Laminate or hardwood... can't go wrong... wood doesn't have to match... mine doesn't either... a great relief actually... even contemporary with antique is dandy so is different colored wood...and or laminate... they have some now these days that's to die for... absolutely gorgeous, resilient, easy to clean and care for stuff..
Connie
ps: I only click anonymous because I don't how to work it any other way....
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